Share the Moon
Dog Days Are Over
The light is changing. The sun’s still hanging on, but it’s now brushing the horizon by 8 o’clock. There’s still plenty of summer left, but all signs show the season beginning to fold inward.
I’ve started scanning the roadsides for crimson sumac. Sumac tea, for the uninitiated, tastes a little like lemon steeped in bark. It’s medicinal, they say— an acquired taste, like the bittersweetness of transition itself. Other autumnal offerings are starting to appear. My colleague recently shared lobster mushrooms she foraged from a bog in Cook County. The evening temperatures have cooled enough that my late-day labors this week call for an extra layer.
This summer I made attempts to resume my practice of night gardening. It is a practical solution to the heat. In my twenties I had read that a famous poet was fond of gardening in the night. Sonnet 116? Perhaps one of the Brontë sisters? Moonlight, Summer Moonlight? Regardless, I like the idea of literary ghosts nodding approvingly as I do away with crabgrass. There’s something deeply satisfying about pulling weeds by moonlight. The mind, too tired to overthink, settles into the rhythm and becomes absorbed in the ritual. At moments like these I wish I could Share The Moon—its quiet company, its cool light, the way it makes labor feel like reverie. I think I missed something about the full moon rising, but I can’t be sure. I was covered in too much sweat and sleep.
“Tis moonlight, summer moonlight,
All soft and still and fair;
The solemn hour of midnight
Breathes sweet thoughts everywhere,
But most where trees are sending
Their breezy boughs on high,
Or stooping low are lending
A shelter from the sky.
And there in those wild bowers
A lovely form is laid;
Green grass and dew-steeped flowers
Wave gently round her head.”
On the subject of Shakespeare, my time with the Brontës also recalls another experiment: segmented sleep. This biphasic pattern involves sleeping in smaller stretches, generally two cycles, like Shakespeare supposedly did: four hours here, four hours there. It’s a great way to feel productive and slightly insane. While unhealthy and unsustainable, I suppose it is how I was able to survive a career transition with newborns pressed against my chest.
Come to think of it, there were other lifestyle habits I would employ to a religious degree for a time. Ben Franklin’s daily schedule once guided my own: simple, structured, safe. But lately, I’ve been bending time, stealing hours from midnight to stretch the day. There’s something about this dissonant liminal space between light and dark, summer and fall, wakefulness and rest that feels like a bit of magic.